Northfax West

Project description

The Northfax West site comprises approximately 11.46 acres assembled from the parcels listed in the project record, located within the City of Fairfax, Virginia (Tax Map 57-2). The 11.46-acre figure is drawn from the June 1, 2020 Revised Statement of Justification and Master Development Plan, which are the controlling submissions; an earlier January 6, 2020 cover sheet stated 11.32 acres, and the difference is attributable to the inclusion of approximately 0.31 acres of vacated Orchard Street right-of-way in the later figure.

Existing conditions on the site include two one-story houses located on the residentially zoned (RM) portion of the property, a vehicle storage lot, an existing restaurant, and vacant or undeveloped land. The site is currently zoned CR (Commercial Retail) and RM (Residential Medium).

The proposal is a phased mixed-use redevelopment. Phase 2 includes approximately 25,000 square feet of office, retail, and restaurant uses (per the April 30 and June 1, 2020 revised documents, which supersede the January 2020 Traffic Impact Study's description of 20,000 SF ground-floor retail plus 5,000 SF restaurant). The project also includes a senior living facility described in the June 1, 2020 MDP tabulations as 200 units (244 beds), with parking totaling 126 spaces (114 garage plus 12 surface) per the June 1, 2020 controlling documents. A minimum of 126 parking spaces is to be constructed in conjunction with Phase Three, with a total of 260 parking spaces associated with the project. A Future Development Parcel of approximately 3.31 acres is identified on the June 1, 2020 Master Development Plan. The project also includes an eight-foot-wide pedestrian trail per the June 1, 2020 Statement of Justification. The project is currently under construction.

Several data elements could not be confirmed from the project documents with sufficient confidence to be used in computation. The proposed residential unit count appears in documents but the extractable quote was too lengthy to be treated as a reliable figure; accordingly, the proposed unit count is recorded as not confirmed. The number of stories and the affordable unit count are similarly unconfirmed. Tenure type was not found verbatim in the documents.

Fiscal effects

Current tax base. The current real estate tax on the assembled site parcels is $1,188,525 per year, computed as the current assessed value of the parcels multiplied by the City's real estate tax rate. The assessed value underlying this figure reflects parcels that already contain built or under-construction townhouse units and associated improvements; as noted in the data sources, this means the current baseline is not a pre-development value, and the real estate tax increase metric therefore understates the true increment over the original pre-development condition.

Projected real estate tax. The projected real estate tax on the proposed development is estimated at $53,625 to $107,250 per year (central: $73,734), computed by multiplying the projected assessed value by the real estate tax rate. The projected assessed value ranges from $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 (central: $6,875,000), derived by applying an assumed commercial assessed value of $200–$400 per square foot (central: $275) to the approximately 25,000 square feet of proposed ground-floor commercial space. The residential value component contributes $0 to this figure because the confirmed unit count is not available; the office component likewise contributes $0 because no office square footage has been confirmed. These are screening-estimate values using assumed per-square-foot ranges, not appraisal or comparable-sales figures.

Real estate tax change. The net change in real estate tax—projected minus current—ranges from –$1,134,900 to –$1,081,275 per year (central: –$1,114,791). This negative result reflects that the current parcel assessments, which already incorporate substantial completed construction value at approximately $9,670,000 per acre, substantially exceed what this analysis can project for the commercial-only program that is quantifiable from the confirmed spec data.

Other recurring revenues (all rough estimates). Several additional revenue lines are estimated on a rough-estimate basis:

• BPOL business license tax on project retail: $1,875 to $15,000 per year (central: $6,000), computed as proposed retail square footage multiplied by assumed gross sales per square foot, multiplied by the BPOL retail rate, multiplied by a net-new share assumption of 15%–50% (central: 30%) to account for sales displaced from existing city businesses.
• Business tangible property tax: $4,130 to $15,488 per year (central: $8,260), computed as proposed commercial square footage multiplied by an assumed equipment value of $4–$15 per square foot (central: $8) and the personal property tax rate. This estimate is not displacement-adjusted, as the fixtures and equipment are physically new to the city.
• Meals tax on the project's restaurants (net-new): $12,656 to $236,250 per year (central: $67,500), computed as ground-floor square footage multiplied by assumed sales per square foot, multiplied by an assumed restaurant share of 30%–70% (central: 50%), the meals tax rate, and the net-new share assumption. The wide range reflects compounded uncertainty across multiple assumptions.
• Local sales tax on project retail (net-new): $9,375 to $75,000 per year (central: $30,000), computed as ground-floor square footage multiplied by assumed sales per square foot, the local sales tax share, and the net-new share assumption.

These four lines are individually labeled as rough estimates in the analysis. The economic module results were not available, so certain additional revenue computations that depend on them were not performed.

Comparison with external (city staff) estimate. The city staff report published for the July 14, 2020 City Council Public Hearing states: "Staff anticipates a range for the fiscal impact of -$29,000 to $215,000 with an average $93,000 annually as a result of the proposed redevelopment." This is the city staff's published estimate and is reproduced here as attributed. The same range (–$29,000 to $215,000) appears in the Exhibit 15 fiscal table of the staff report Part 2, which also reports a total revenue figure of $978,000.

The city staff range (–$29,000 to $215,000) and this analysis's net real estate tax change alone (–$1,134,900 to –$1,081,275) do not overlap. Several methodological differences are visible. First, the staff report appears to have used a pre-development assessed value baseline reflecting the site before construction, while this analysis uses current 2026 assessments that already incorporate substantial built value from units now under construction or complete—this difference alone causes the current-tax baseline in this analysis to be substantially higher than what the staff report would have used in 2020. Second, the staff report's revenue total of $978,000 suggests it incorporated a broader set of revenue sources and likely projected assessed values for the full proposed program (including the senior living and residential components) that this analysis cannot replicate because the residential unit count is not confirmed. Third, the staff report was prepared at the time of the 2020 rezoning decision and therefore reflected a pre-construction baseline; this analysis works from 2026 assessment data on parcels already transformed by development activity. These analyses are not averaged or combined.

Not evaluated in this version

Economic impact (jobs, wages, indirect effects), the bike-lane corridor analysis, trail and connectivity analyses, environmental and stormwater analyses, and comparable-places fiscal benchmarking are all deferred from this version. The economic module was not computed because the proposed residential unit count could not be confirmed from the project documents, which also precluded certain revenue estimates that depend on household and employment figures.